February 23, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

A current catalog for an optics company has caused a stir by featuring a woman in a tight red skirt on the cover. Which is frustrating that a vendor in a career field which has some pretty serious issues with gender come to light over the last few years should know better.

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February 5, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

This is an argument I’ve gone around with other people about over on TerraNova, and other places. Why are language and text still important? Spinning off a question over at the O’Reilly Mac blog questioning why programmer’s love editors if typing is such a barrier to thinking and problem solving.

My answer to the question is that language and text are still important because they are cognitive alchemy.

Language is critical because it is one of the ways in which human beings communicate about the real world using abstractions. We appear to be hard-wired for language, with the process of learning language starting before birth and a large chunk of the actual (as opposed to the written formal) grammar mastered before we go to school. Advocates of “post-literacy” will of course point out that we have equal cognitive facility with graphics, and can communicate other things graphically. I won’t disagree, but will point out that visual literacy is different from linguistic literacy and have different powers.

Encoding language onto some sort of a persistent medium provides a different type of power. You can now start linking short utterances together into more complicated structures: sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, chapters, and books. You can use this persistent text to make arguments and claims that are difficult to convey in a single conversation and lecture. For better or for worse, you have created a record of that thought process that does not depend on a shared and reasonably quiet location in space and time.

I think this explains both programmer’s love of editors, and the persistence of asynchronous text messaging systems over long periods of time. The ability to copy and paste paragraphs or portions of code is the ability to change the basic logical concepts expressed. Asynchronous messaging systems such as mail and bulletin-boards create knowledge that can be reviewed and revised at a later date.

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January 31, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

At the moment, reading a fair quantity of the web chatter regarding the newly running Democratic presidential candidates, I’m picking up on a disturbing thread going around. Equal marriage rights (often framed as “gay marriage”) is a “wedge” issue exploited by Republicans to shock people away from voting for Democrats. Therefore, Democratic candidates should avoid taking a position on that issue. After all it’s an issue that only affects a small minority compared to health care or the Iraq War.

Or is it?

I suggest that equal marriage rights is a wedge issue in more ways than one. The “wedge strategy” was admitted by groups advocating Intelligent Design instruction in schools. Once the tip of the wedge, intelligent design, created a crack in public education, it would be easier to press more faith-based curriculum into public schools. ID advocacy groups have neither been adept at hiding this agenda, nor shy about it either.

Likewise, the goal of legislation and constitutional amendments ostensibly intended to hold the line at “gay marriage,” is to open a wedge for challenging a wide variety of case law and policy regarding families, privacy, medical care and insurance. It is foolish to believe that constitutional language that privileges heterosexual marriage will not be used in court cases regarding divorce, private sexual behavior, child custody, contraception and discrimination. Non-discrimination laws and policies could come under attack, as well as education and support services at public schools and universities. Just at with ID advocacy, “marriage defenders” have not been shy about having a more sweeping agenda.

The pressure to roll the clock back is not going to go away, and the effects of these initiatives on family and privacy law are too sweeping to ignore. I don’t expect Democratic candidates to have the moral courage to take on the irrational knee-jerk reactions that surround the word “marriage.” If Edwards, Clinton or Obama want to use “unions not marriage” language, I’m willing to compromise. I do expect Democrats to stand fast against legislation and constitutional initiatives that have the potential to undermine current rights for all families, gay and straight. I do expect the Democrats to stand fast against initiatives that could hinder private and public institutions from setting their own non-discrimination, benefit, and support policies.

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December 30, 2006 by kirkjobsluder.

I suspect that one of the things that really hinders politics on the left is the endless sniping of so-called “pragmatists” against what they identify as “radical” or “revolutionary.” A recent example came to my attention in the form of a diary entry over at Daily Kos which is just plain muddled in its mangling of philosophy, history and politics to explain why “revolutionaries” are just plain wrong.

To start with, it’s fairly obvious that Dracowyrm is not talking about Pragmatism in the sense of John Dewey’s vision of participatory democracy, and certainly not Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism which explores the ways in which expressions of radical Utopian vision have contributed to American politics. And it’s also unclear as to whether the “revolutionism” really represents actual groups, or is just an invention.

Dracowyrm: Pragmatism, as I would define it, seeks incremental change in a positive direction by charting a course which consistently pursues outcomes which are achievable and, while somewhat ambitious, are not so wildly so that they are unlikely to be accomplished. After each such outcome is achieved, conditions are reassessed and another step forward is charted. Pragmatism’s hallmarks, therefore, are positive change over time, taking smaller, more conservative steps than are pursued by revolutionists.

Revolutionism swings for the stands. It pursues great leaps of positive change in a minimal number of steps–often, a single radical change– arguing that pragmatism doesn’t do enough, or that moral imperatives such as injustice obligate pursuit of fundamental or radical shifts in politics, however unlikely they may be to be achieved. Moral imperative is often argued by revolutionists: we have no choice but to stand for this–anything less would be moral failure.

He then goes on to talk about the effects of these two different approaches, arguing that “pragmatic” battles lead to progress, while “revolutionist” battles lead to totalitarianism.

Dracowyrm: What progressives have accomplished in this country has come through incremental cultural shift. Civil rights activism on the part of African-Americans had been going on for nearly 150 years before the desegregation of the military and Brown v. the Board of Education. Enough Americans knew that racism was wrong by the time those steps had been taken that those who did not were in the minority.

Likewise the women’s movement. The failure of the ERA ended up not mattering, because its principles were rapidly taking root in the culture. Likewise environmentalism: advances in law came as a result of growing awareness of the need for it. Likewise labor law.

The problem is that this doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. Somehow progressive revisionism has made MLK into a warm and fuzzy incrementalist. However, MLK’s writings contain some of the most beloved and wonderful statements of American radicalism. In his “I Have a Dream” address, MLK prophesies (in the Cornel West pragmatic sense) that his cause will never be satisfied until full equality is reached. His benchmarks for that equality are rather lofty:

MLK (I Have a Dream): I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

MLK advocated radical direct action in Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and dismissed the notion of holding off on making strong demands until some sort of critical consensus is reached.

MLK (Letter from a Birmingham Jail): We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

MLK’s role in the civil rights movement involved forcing the consensus by demonstrating that the injustices of segregation and discrimination were so severe, they justified civil disobedience by otherwise law-abiding citizens. MLK invoked traditions from the American Revolution and the Bible as justification for direct action tactics. Before MLK came Ida Wells and the NAACP.

The women’s movement, labor law, and environmentalism were also built in a large part by people who forced the issue by expressing an underlying moral cause and principle. They may have accepted incremental change as positive steps forward, but they never shirked from making statements that absolute and full social justice is the only acceptable end goal.

Dracowyrm is specifically talking about the impeachment of Bush. Personally, I have no stake in that because I don’t believe that the Democrats have the moral authority to do so after having enabled him for 6 years. Impeachment doesn’t particularly strike me as revolutionary. The threat or use of impeachment has not fundamentally changed party politics when invoked. But Dracowyrm is making a broader statement.

Dracowyrm: The core of my argument is that you cannot achieve lasting results if you try to push the people farther than they are willing to go. You haven’t addressed that, and that’s the heart of it.

Which misses the whole point of MLK’s activism. This is completely wrong in regards to LGBT rights which were won because LGBTs were willing to push the envelope by announcing, “we’re here, we’re queer get used to it.” The vote for women was won by women taking to the streets. Labor battles were won by workers on the picket lines. You don’t achieve lasting results by staying well within th comfort-zone of contemporary politics. Civil rights activists in the United States spent two centuries pushing whites further than they wanted to go. And they still need to do it.

One difference that I see between radicals and progressives here is that radicals see small steps as a means to an end, while progressives are mired in gaming the electoral politics. The radical approach to strategic voting is to hold our noses and make the least noxious choices, while the progressive approach is to push key issues back into the closet during an election. Radicals often serve as the moral consience of left-wing politics by refusing to talk about issues such as social justice, and refusing to pretend that candidates are not often lacking in some areas.

Which brings me back to my previous post. Something I feel that is missing at the moment in regards to LGBT rights is a similar statement to that of MLK that nothing less than complete equality will be ultimately acceptable.

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December 29, 2006 by kirkjobsluder.

I’m wondering, what happened in 15 years. Once upon a time I was part of a community that saw heterosexism as a serious problem, and was willing to say, “hey, you know, perhaps heterosexuality is not all that they claim it to be. Perhaps it doesn’t slice, dice, and cure warts and cancer.”

Now it seems, it’s all about separate-but-equal “partnerships” and “marriage” and supporting the Democratic party as long as it doesn’t blatantly throw lgbt’s under the bus for political advantage.

I’ve come to the following two conclusions over the years:

First, the primary goal of political operatives of either of the two main parties is to expand that party’s power. Perhaps this is an over-generalization, but I think left-wing activists should act as if it were true.

Second, none of the civil rights battles in history were won by a pragmatic acceptance of compromise. People like Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King expressed the view that full social, economic, and legal equality were necessities for a just society. We remember King’s “I have a dream” speech because it is a blatantly utopian vision of the end goal.

Which is why I find myself unwilling to applaud John Edwards’ rather half-hearted answer to the question of same-sex marriage equality. (Pandagon) I suppose I should be willing to shower praise on his willingness to take baby-steps. But I’m increasingly unwilling to give politicians slack for weaseling around making a commitment to the right thing.

Mostly I’ve lost faith in the electoral process as a way to effect fundamental change, which is where I think lgbt-activists and friendly people should start to explicitly claim an agenda. That agenda is nothing less than full social, economic, and legal equality. Domestic partnerships is a step forward, but not the final goal. When someone like Edwards goes part way, perhaps we should say, “good, but not quite there.” We should give our unreserved praise for those who give unreserved support.

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December 19, 2006 by kirkjobsluder.

… for the mythical “war on Christmas.”

One of the nice things about being an all-American mutt, a Heinz-57 is that I can claim “founding fathers” on all sides of any conflict in which they are invoked. My Puritan ancestors for example were not overly fond of celebrations of Christmas, partly because they were not that big on fun, partly because Christmas feasts were seen as too Catholic, and partly because worship was supposed to be a solemn event. On the other side, I had ancestors whose celebrations started with the feast of St. Nicholas in early December, and ended in Epiphany in January. Then there were my ancestors in the fellowship of Friends who just sat in meeting. Which just goes to show that our “founding fathers” in the rather messy multi-cultural society that was the early United States may not always agree with our modern celebrations of Christmas. The culture gap between the segregated varieties of post-reformation faith was as broad as nationality today.

At any rate, the “war on Christmas” rhetoric puts those of us who do not attach special religious significance on the season in a rather difficult position. If we abstain politely from religious expression, we are engaged in a war to remove Christmas from the public sphere. If we appropriate symbols and traditions as family occasions, similar to national holidays, we are guilty of secularization. The only acceptable solution for the people complaining about a siege on Christmas is for non-Christians to vanish from the scene entirely.

And many of the complaints seem to be amazingly petty and silly. My association of “Happy Holidays” comes from Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin songs in a film that also included, “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.” When I use “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” it is the recognition that there is a vast span of celebrations in the season, and I may not see you again in the short interval between St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years Day, 12th Night, Epiphany, or even Martin Luther King Day. I say it with best wishes for you and yours, and without any of the snide malice attributed to it. When you say “Merry Christmas” to me, I as a non-believer take it as a friendly expression of goodwill. This war is largely a non-starter.

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